Get to know our team and who to talk to. We would love to hear from you.
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn
A44 Games
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Meet the team behind the magic.
NZGDC is made up of volunteers and team members that make things happen. Meet the people that work hard ensuring you have the best conference possible!
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Executive Director, NZGDA
Joy Keene is a passionate advocate for game developers in Aotearoa. With a number of years experience in running membership organisations and conferences, Joy has developed a unique understanding of how to harness events to drive engagement, collaboration, and growth for NZGDA members and the wider game dev community.
Joy is excited to bring her expertise to our conference as Event Manager and contribute to creating an engaging and informative program for attendees.
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Programme Administrator, NZGDA
Gina Chong works closely with Joy Keene at the NZGDA to deliver high-quality membership programmes.
With a keen eye for detail and a passion for ensuring seamless logistics, Gina helps ensure that all aspects of the conference come together smoothly.
Gina is thrilled to be working alongside Joy to bring you an unforgettable conference experience.
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CEO, Founder & Creative Director, Rascal and Organising Committee, NZGDC
Arriving to the gaming scene through Design, Kelsey always had the intention of founding a creative business - Starting Rascality, a digital creative service and development studio in Berlin 2017.
Developing out of the Studio, Rascal – an interactive storytelling platform for kids, was founded in 2021. Currently paving new ground for playable storytelling content, bridging between film, television and games.
Kelsey has recently produced 8 playable, animated short films, alongside growing the business and team.
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Head of Attraction, Screen Wellington & Organising Committee, NZGDC
Mark has a rich and varied history in the creative sector, working previously as the director of the NZ Fringe Festival and the Hamilton Arts Festival, the producer of the PANNZ Arts Market, CEO/MD of Random Group and for several years on international events like London Fashion Week, Australian Fashion Week, Sydney Film Festival and Tropfest Film Festival.
Mark is a skilled interviewer and for 15 years was a host of Caffeine & Aspirin Arts Show on Radioactive.fm.
In recent years, he has served as Executive Producer/Associate Producer on films such as Whina, Pork Pie, Born Racer, Dawn Raid and We Need To Talk About A.I.
Having developed a specialist screen marketing company, Mark has been producing and directing EPK/BTS, trailer and media content, and in the past year has delivered content for Uproar, Bad Behaviour, After The Party, The Lie and Never Look Away. He was awarded a Silver Award at the Golden Trailer Awards for his work on The Luminaries and won the Asia/Pacific category at the World Trailer Awards for Millie Lies Low.
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Board Member & Conference Organising Committee, NZGDA
Elissa Snowball is an Associate Producer at RocketWerkz, where she has held various roles for over four years. In addition to typical producer duties, she serves as the main point of contact for customer support within the community, leads the live-streaming team, creates trailers for games, and manages social media platforms.
Elissa's interest in game development began in university after attending an inspiring talk from a female game developer and receiving guidance and support from her lecturers to enhance her skills through additional classes and projects. She enjoys playing cozy, single-player games and occasionally indulges in playing League of Legends with friends.
Elissa has been involved in the NZGDA since January 2024 and involved in NZGDC in various roles since 2020, and is excited to be a part of the organising team this year!
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Senior Lecturer, Victoria University and Organising Committee, NZGDC
Meet Simon - who has been teaching Computer Science since 1999 with Game specific courses from 2004, and ran the very first Game Developers Conference the same year!
At undergraduate level Simon has taught everything from Game Design, with a focus on system design, to GPU programming and Multithreaded optimization. For graduate-level research, he focuses on Serious Games, mainly Games for Health and Games for Education.